


The Doctor's Daughter

by Flora_Obsidian



Series: an awful lot of running to do [1]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Family, Father-Daughter Relationship, Fix-It, Gen, time for a rewrite let's goooooooooooooooo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-06
Updated: 2017-07-06
Packaged: 2018-11-28 15:13:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11420622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flora_Obsidian/pseuds/Flora_Obsidian
Summary: The time between witnessing the impossible and holding Jenny in his arms, laughter turned into sobs turned back to laughter, was unclear. He didn't remember crossing the room, or what Donna and Martha's reactions were, or if he had said anything at all, but he found himself whispering Gallifreyan into her pale blonde hair when she interrupted him.“Dad,” she said, and his hearts stuttered. She held just as tight to him as he was to her, tears in her eyes.





	The Doctor's Daughter

_It's completely terrifying, but it's oh so exciting / He said I was brilliant and I could change the world / So many places I've been, and there's so much more to see / We've got galaxies and planets and moons / And an awful lot of running to do!_

_~An Awful Lot of Running to Do, Chameleon Circuit_

* * *

* * *

The silence bore down on him.

Hath and Humans alike had cleared from the terrarium; the platform on which the Source had rested for the past week was now empty. Donna and Martha had backed away to give him space, and the Doctor knelt on the concrete, and Jenny's body was limp and cooling in his arms.

_Regenerate. Please, we're the only ones left._

There were footsteps. He ignored them. Rationally, he knew that he couldn't stay here; Martha needed to get back to her home, and Donna was still living on board the TARDIS, and his-- _Jenny's_ body needed to be taken care of. She was cold to the touch, though her fingers were warmed by his hands around them, and she was pale and still and peaceful, and she was dead.

He couldn't stay here, but today, like so many other days, he wanted nothing more than to never get up again. Let the universe drag on without him. It had managed before him, it could continue to manage without him as well.

_It's just a bullet, come on, regenerate!_

After everything-- after all the times he had dared to hope, after all the people he had lost-- so many friends, his planet, his _home_ and all the people on it-- after everything, didn't he deserve this? Someone who wouldn't leave? She wasn't Gallifreyan, wasn't a Time Lord, and they would never be able to share that history and bear that legacy, but she was his _child_. There was so much he could teach her. That empty space in the back of his mind wouldn't be quite so empty with another like mind. She was his child.

 _Was_ his child.

The footsteps had stopped. Perhaps he had imagined them.

Her hair was blonde, like his had been, centuries and centuries ago. She had his fifth's eyes. The curve of her cheeks was all his sixth's, and her smile was his fourth's, and programming or not, his third would have approved of the martial arts skill.

His children, long-gone-- they had taken after their mother, all of them. Red hair and bright eyes and a fondness for their father's stories, even though his stories were never strictly appropriate for budding Time Lords. Too much nonsense about going against the status quot. He had needed to hunt for similarities between them and himself, and it had been so long since he had seen their faces or managed to look at the few surviving pictures of them that he could no longer remember any of those similarities, or if they had even existed to begin with. What had they looked like when they were laughing?

But he knew what Jenny looked like when she laughed. When she smiled. He had known her for long enough to know that much, and he would forget in time, but he knew.

Not-quite footsteps sounded, the shuffling of feet on floor, and he glanced up to see one of the Human soldier-boys a short distance away. The one who had guarded their cell just a few short hours ago. His eyes were red-rimmed.

“She deserves a proper ceremony,” said the soldier-boy quietly. The Doctor couldn't remember his name. “I think-- it would be good. For all of us. She deserves that much. Please.”

* * *

He had given the Humans and the Hath handwritten instructions on how to carry out a Time Lord funeral. She wasn't a Time Lord, no, but she was his daughter. Two hearts big enough to fit the universe between them-- his daughter, yes.

Besides, if anyone discovered he was here and that it had been a clone of his to end the fighting – and he had no doubt that they would, eventually; word of him tended to spread – they would come looking. Her death, exchanged for peace and a new start, would mean nothing when armies came to burn Messaline to the ground for just a single cell.

The Humans and the Hath knew what to do, and the Doctor fully intended to leave. His instincts were screaming at him to run-- he _wanted_ to run-- running was fun, he loved the running, but running kept him a step ahead of heartsbreak. He didn't like goodbyes. Funerals were much too... _final_.

He intended to leave. He wanted to run. Donna had caught him as he was ducking back toward the TARDIS, and grabbed him by the arm, and frowned at him.

“You're staying for the funeral?” she asked, but it was more like a firm suggestion than a question, and her frown only deepened when the words caught in his throat. “You weren't-- no. _No_. She died for you, Doctor, for everyone here. You can't just-- you can't leave.”

She didn't back down at the look on his face, a pain and grief that stretched well beyond the events of the day.

He nodded.

And so he stood with Donna and Martha at his sides, his hearts aching-- no tears, no, the tears could wait until later, for when he was alone. He'd suffered worse than this before, and likely would again. No, if he started to cry, especially now, he was unlikely to stop. He stood with Donna and Martha at his sides, his hearts aching, and watched as the soldier-boy and a Hath draped a sheet over Jenny's still form.

She would be wrapped in it at the end of the ceremony, which was to be carried out in the traditions of Human and Hath, and she would be cremated atop a funeral pyre as was Gallifreyan custom, and her ashes would be scattered on the first field of Messaline to grow grass. Some wide open place, they had told him, underneath the sunlight and the stars.

The crying could come later.

Then the soldier-boy made a startled kind of sound and took a half-step back, alarmed, and the Hath bubbled in curiosity, and the Doctor's head snapped up, and he _would not hope_ , except--

Wisps of golden drifted into the air, carried from Jenny's lips on a gentle exhale, and she sat up with a wide-eyed expression of confusion, studying the sheet in her lap.

The time between witnessing the impossible and holding Jenny in his arms, laughter turned into sobs turned back to laughter, was unclear. He didn't remember crossing the room, or what Donna and Martha's reactions were, or if he had said anything at all, but he found himself whispering Gallifreyan into her pale blonde hair when she interrupted him.

“Dad,” she said, and his hearts stuttered. She held just as tight to him as he was to her, tears in her eyes. “Dad, I can't breathe.”

He loosened his grip, but didn't let go. Donna smiled, and Martha was crying shamelessly. And everything was, just for once, good.

* * *

Earth was bright and blue and _smelled_ ; the Doctor and Jenny were all but bouncing in their excitement outside the TARDIS doors, which the Doctor had parked across the road from Martha's house, and Martha and Donna were a short distance away, watching the pair as they held a conversation of their own.

“He shouldn't be by himself,” Martha said. She was frowning a bit as she did, giving Donna cause to think that there was a reason behind her words, something she had witnessed to make her so sure-- “Not that you're not important! He needs friends, _needs_ people like you and I. But he needs... he needs someone like him, too.”

(Martha had no idea if the Doctor truthfully believed the Master could have been saved, or if he had just been so desperate to have another of his people alive that he didn't care _who_ it was. She hated the other renegade with a fury that took her by surprise at times, but even so, the Doctor's heartbroken screams when he had died still haunted her.)

“No, I understand.” Donna glanced over. The Doctor had thrown an arm over Jenny's shoulders, talking animatedly, smiling more widely than she had ever seen him. It was a far, far cry from the man he had been when they first met, dark and tired and hurting. “She'll be good for him. And she'll stay.”

The young girl in question happened to look up, caught their gazes, and waved brightly, darting across the road to hug them both before pulling back and continuing to bounce from foot to foot. The Doctor watched with a broad grin, leaning up against the side of his box. “Donna, he says we can go and meet a woman named Agatha Christie? She writes books, apparently, he says I'll enjoy reading them-- I've never _read_ a book before-- do you like reading books, Donna?”

The two women shared an amused glance. Talking a mile a minute, bouncing from topic to topic... there was no doubt, to those who knew the Doctor, that the two were related.

“I'll leave you lot to it, then,” Martha said with a smile, giving the Doctor a final wave. They had said their goodbyes earlier. “Don't be a stranger, now, understand?”

“Oh, I'll make sure he stops by,” Donna assured her.

“Good-- oh!” Martha found herself in yet another hug, feet lifted slightly up off the ground. Jenny was looked a little bit teary-eyed, and sniffled.

“I'm gonna miss you.”

“I'll miss you too, Jenny,” Martha answered, sounding a little bit short on air. “Keep your dad out of trouble, yeah?”

“But trouble's the fun part!” Jenny released her, hugged her again, and probably would have repeated the process a few more times if the Doctor hadn't finally decided to wander over and mention that it was probably time they got going. Martha set off towards her home, and the three crossed the road again to the little blue box.

The whole universe was ahead of them, and there wasn't anything that was going to stand in their way.

**Author's Note:**

> Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh boy. Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh boy. An honest-to-goodness rewrite of AALORTD, four years in the making, with two other unrelated WIPs in-progress. Everything is t o t a l l y fine.
> 
>  
> 
> ~~there's gonna be so much to write~~
> 
>  
> 
> As always, I hope everyone enjoyed, and comments and kudos are much appreciated! Find me on Tumblr @floraobsidian


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